A Lesson in Secrets (23 page)

Chapter Seventeen

M
aisie walked for some time following her departure from the Union. She meandered along the grassy verges of the Backs and eventually found her way to a vantage point from which she could look out upon the spires and towers of the city and be soothed by their silhouettes, bathed in the deep-orange glow of the setting sun. And later, having collected the bicycle and returned to her lodgings, she sat by her window in darkness, staring out into a purplish-black night sky embellished as if someone had thrown jewels to the heavens with abandon. She could not remember many starry nights as a child, but occasionally the coverlet of fog seemed to draw back and her father would point out the constellations. “There’s the Plough, Maisie—see?” And his hand would sweep across her line of vision, tracing the outline of a cluster of stars so she could see the shape. Now she tried to make sense of all that had come to pass since she arrived at the College of St. Francis.

She had read parts of the book written by the leader of Germany’s National Socialist Party, but was disturbed by so much of what he had laid down under the title
Mein Kampf
. And when she saw again, in her mind’s eye, the vision of Robson Headley standing with his hand held high in salute, and the light in his eyes as he shouted his allegiance, she remembered a line that she had marked in the book.
The broad masses of the people are more amenable to the appeal of rhetoric than to any other force.
Huntley had seemed almost indifferent to her concerns regarding the activities of Nazi supporters in Britain, though she understood that at least one person in his midst had also raised an alarm. There were those who were impressed by the leader, not least Britain’s own advocates of fascism, and she was dismayed that so many of those people seemed to be in positions of some influence.

But what about Dunstan Headley? She doodled his name on the case map in front of her, then tapped her pencil on the paper, absently creating a cluster of gray dots spiraling in and out, in and out, as if following the pattern of a snail shell. Dunstan Headley was an angry man. Robson was almost entirely dependent upon his father for financial support, and she had little doubt that Headley Senior might choose to turn the screw on his son by withholding money unless he agreed to toe a particular line.

Maisie rubbed her eyes and stood up; it was the early hours of the morning and she finally felt ready to go to bed. When she looked down at the case map, she realized that she had, without thinking, been inscribing the names
Robson Headley—Dunstan Headley—Delphine Lang
time and again in circles across a section of the paper.

T
he following morning—Friday—Maisie arrived at Liverpool Street station at half past nine, drove through the gate marked “Way in for Cabs,” and parked the MG. She hurried inside to check the arrival times of trains from Cambridge, then returned and moved the vehicle along so that she was not obstructing the cabbies, to a place that afforded her a view of people exiting the station and setting off again in taxi-cabs. The day was cool and beyond the canopy of the station there was a light rain, for which she was somewhat glad. Waiting in the heat of the day would not be comfortable, though this kind of surveillance always seemed to hurt somewhere in her body. She changed her position frequently, once or twice getting out of the motor car to walk up and down for a few steps, until she noticed a surge of passengers exiting the station, and took her place behind the wheel again. At one point a policeman came to ask why she was waiting for so long, and she explained that she was expecting a friend who’d had an accident and was using crutches. The constable laughed and made a comment to the effect that he wished her good luck getting the friend in the two-seater tourer. The exchange was light, but Maisie knew he might come along again and move her on. Another hour passed and another surge of passengers streamed out, then thinned, and at once she saw a woman whom she believed to be Francesca Thomas. The woman stopped for a second to survey the line of people waiting outside, then walked to a taxi-cab and climbed in. Maisie could not be completely sure it was her, but she knew she had to take a chance. She was slipping the MG into gear when the constable knocked on the window again.

“Still waiting, Miss? You’ve been here a bit now.”

“I think she must have missed her train, constable. Not to worry, I’ll get my motor out of the way and telephone her mother.”

“I’ll keep an eye on your motor if you want to run in—”

“Oh, I’m sure she should have been here by now. Thank you! I’ll be off now.”

And with that, Maisie stepped on the accelerator pedal, anxious to catch up with the taxi-cab carrying the woman she believed to be Thomas.

“Blast! Where
are
you?”

People were crossing the road, and traffic seemed to be converging on the station from all directions. “Blast!” she said again, striking the steering wheel with her hand. Then the crowd parted for a horse and cart to come through, and she realized that the taxi-cab had stopped not far in front of her. A coster had tipped his barrow and was hurrying to load up the fallen fruit and vegetables. Some people stopped to help, for traffic was snarling up, and Maisie saw the cabbie lean out and shake his fist at the coster.

“You shouldn’t be on the bleeding road with that old nag.”

“Don’t you call this ’orse a nag, you and that filthy thing you’re driving there. Scum of the earth on the streets, you are.”

The taxi driver was about to get out, when Maisie saw the silhouette of the passenger inside lean forward, as if to caution him. In time, the horse and cart moved on, the coster shaking his fist back at the cabbie, and traffic began to snake along once more. Maisie’s doubts about following the right taxi-cab and whether indeed the passenger was Francesca Thomas were laid to rest when the journey took them closer to Belgravia. They soon approached Eaton Square, at the same point at which the driver she was with before had lost her quarry. Now she realized why. The taxi-cab’s route was circuitous, along smaller parallel streets and cutting back and forth. With traffic easing as they moved into the smaller streets, Maisie maintained her distance, but kept the black vehicle in sight as it doubled back to Eaton Place. The driver stopped, and Maisie pulled over in the shade of a tree. Francesca Thomas alighted from the taxi-cab, paid the fare, then walked along the street and entered one of the grand mansions. Maisie watched and waited for the taxi-cab to be on his way again before slipping the MG into gear and parking on the other side of the square. Pulling her cloche hat down close to her eyes, she walked back to the mansion Francesca Thomas had entered. She looked up at the building, then back and forth along the street, and at that point a man wearing a black suit, white shirt, and bowler hat, and carrying an umbrella, walked towards her. When he was just a couple of steps away, Maisie smiled in his direction.

“Excuse me, sir—may I trouble you for a moment? Do you know this area?”

The man nodded. “Yes. I work here.”

“You work here?” Maisie had detected a slight accent.

“Yes, many of the buildings along here are leased; this is the Belgian Embassy—though of course we haven’t quite taken over the whole square.”

“I see.” Maisie looked up at the building again.

“Can I help you, or did you simply want to know who resided in the square?”

“Oh, no. No, I wanted to know how to get to Victoria station.”

The man proceeded to give precise directions to Victoria, and then, with a doffing of his bowler hat, went on his way. With a final look at the building—and an overwhelming sense that she was a fly in a spider’s web—Maisie turned to walk away.

“Miss Dobbs!”

Francesca Thomas was standing between the two columns that flanked the mansion’s entrance. A man was standing behind her, as if to protect the building and its occupants.

“Dr. Thomas.” Maisie pushed up her cloche a little so their eyes could meet, and approached the woman whom she had followed from Liverpool Street station.

Francesca Thomas smiled. It was a wry smile, as if she had seen the funny side of a quip that no one else had quite picked up on. “Since you’ve made such a determined effort to follow me, I think the least we can do is to offer some sort of refreshment. Would you care to join me?”

Maisie nodded. “Thank you, Dr. Thomas. That’s very kind of you.”

She led Maisie past the threshold, nodding to the man at the door, who stepped out to look up and down the street before closing the door behind him. They continued across the expansive hallway, up the wide staircase, then along a corridor and into a small room. As they walked along, Maisie noticed that the interior of the mansion bore few comforts. It was, without doubt, a place of work, with plain cream paint and no decoration but for portraits of Albert I, King of the Belgians, and his wife, Elisabeth of Bavaria.

“This is the office I use when I am here.” Francesca Thomas held out her hand to one of the beige damask-covered armchairs set in front of a fireplace masked by a needlepoint screen for the summer—the only color in a room that was as plain as the hall, staircase, and corridor. Maisie thought the office might be more welcoming in winter, with a fire in the grate.

“It seems I have been rather careless, that you have managed to find me here.”

“You had no need to come to the door, Dr. Thomas. I may have discovered that the embassy is a frequent destination for your sorties into London, but I confess, I did not quite know what to do with that knowledge—not yet, anyway.”

“But you have an idea of what I am doing here, don’t you?”

Maisie took off her hat and ran a hand through her hair. “I know this much, that you worked for the British Secret Service during the war. I know that you left after a time, and you did not surface in England again until you applied for the job at the College of St. Francis.”

Thomas nodded slowly. “And why are
you
at the college, Miss Dobbs? Oh, and do credit me with some sense—please do not tell me it’s for the love of teaching philosophy.”

Maisie regarded the woman seated before her. She was at ease, confident. Her dress was stylish, yet simple—a tailored black skirt and jacket, a white blouse. She was a striking woman, and Maisie could see that she was also one who would brook no subterfuge and would recognize a lie if she heard it.

“I have found that I really do like teaching—but I came to the college to identify any activities not in the interests of the British government.”

“Don’t forget the Crown. You have to look out for the Crown, you know.”

“Yes, of course,
not in the interests of the Crown
.” Maisie maintained eye contact with her interrogator. “And you? In whose interests are you at the college?”

“Belgium. Among others, of course. Our country suffered occupation in the war and we do not want it to happen again, if we can possibly help it. I have been charged with keeping an eye on developments in this country with regard to our former enemies.”

“Developments in
this
country?”

“Let’s not start by being naïve, Miss Dobbs, unless you really are without a clue as to what is happening here. You are aware of the Ortsgruppe, for example, and its London meetings at Cleveland Terrace.”

“I saw you there, too, Dr. Thomas. Only you were dressed as a man.”

“What gave me away, if I may ask?”

“Your cigarette; the way you held it and discarded the remains after barely smoking half.”

“You’re an observant one, after all. I’ll give you that.” She leaned forward, her elbows on her knees, her hands clasped, as if she wanted to let Maisie in on a tightly held secret. “The infiltration of universities and other such institutions is only one stream of the threat. Your aristocracy, members of your government, indeed, the heir to your throne—they are all quite taken with this man Adolf Hitler. But we know better, we—”

“Dr. Thomas, why do you say
we
? I was informed at the college that you were of Anglo-Swiss parentage.”

“My maternal grandmother was Belgian. I adored her, and I was close to my family there.” She sighed. “I am willing to brief you on my involvement in the security of my country; however, I must have your word that you will not divulge any detail—not a single crumb of information—of what you will hear to another. Even Brian Huntley.”

Maisie looked into the woman’s eyes, her surprise upon hearing Huntley’s name masked by an outer calm. And at that moment she saw a shadow of deep sorrow and remembered a conversation with Maurice about the old proverb “Eyes are the windows to the soul.” She thought, now, that if it were indeed so, then Francesca Thomas had chosen this time to slip the lock on her past and allow memories to escape. Instinct told her that what had come to pass in this woman’s earlier years would chill her to the bone

“You have my word.”

A
s you know, I worked for the Secret Intelligence Service here in London. There were many departments that fell under the auspices of the broader security organization, and I worked in several different ones. I don’t know if this will surprise you, but many, many women worked for the Secret Service—tens of thousands in London alone.”

“I was not aware that such numbers were involved.”

“The men were off fighting; and if they weren’t, and they happened to be able-bodied, they were under suspicion anyway. Of course there were some rather tedious jobs there—intercepting mail from overseas, breaking codes, and so on; but at the same time, women were working on matters of great significance.” Thomas paused. “The interesting thing is that one wasn’t heavily interrogated prior to being offered a job. They were more interested in where you were educated, who your father was, and what you could do for them. In any case, as time went on, and more and more intelligence was coming through about the situation in Belgium, I realized I wanted to be with my family there. I wanted to save them.” She gave a half-laugh and looked away for a few seconds before continuing. “There were intelligence groups working all over the Low Countries and northern France, and I thought I would make a good soldier—I was young, I speak several languages fluently, and I was filled with a desire to do more than sit at a desk and go through letters that might be coded.”